Graça Barbosa and INESC TEC first crossed paths in December 1990 and have never parted ways since. Hired as legal counsel, she is now a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee, having led departments, trained people, and played a key role in the process that led to INESC Porto’s independent status. In the early 1990s, she found a “welcoming environment”, and then everything happened very fast: INESC TEC grew, and Graça Barbosa grew with it.
“There’s one thing I always try to do: adapt to new circumstances. I’m not a very nostalgic person.” Graça Barbosa first met INESC during an age of “paper, paper and more paper”. The first computer would take several months to arrive, and in the meantime, she shared one with her office colleague. In the early 1990s, at Largo de Mompilher, in the heart of Porto, she found “a growing foetus“, as she would later describe it. The institute was still a decade away from occupying the four-storey blocks of the current address, on the Asprela Campus. Surrounded by attentive and dedicated “carers”, it quickly began to grow, and Graça Barbosa kept pace with it – always adapting.
Hired as legal counsel in December 1990, she has been a member of INESC TEC’s Board of Directors (CA) and Executive Committee (CE) since 2021. She grew up watching the institute do the same: “it grew into a healthy, well-behaved child”, she mentioned. In the beginning, as she recalled, “everything was very close-knit”, and that sense of proximity characterised the early days of an organisation still confined to a few offices in the heart of the city. “Everyone knew everyone. It was an environment I found particularly welcoming. Then, everything happened very quickly. Before, we had the sense that we were in control of practically everything that happened. We knew everyone. I thought that growth would be a little more steady. But we adapt to everything.”
A one-woman department
For someone who prefers looking ahead rather than back, who favours constant renewal over comfort, the “dynamism” of an institution like INESC TEC has always been the very reason she has stayed for more than 35 years. Since December 1990, Graça Barbosa has been in what amounts to a state of continuous learning.
And little wonder: before the administrative services became autonomous and began providing personalised support to the work of more than 700 researchers, they were all concentrated within the DIL – Department of Information and Logistics: accounting, legal support, human resources, management control, management support, logistics, etc. Graça Barbosa was nominated to head a unit that would become one of the cornerstones of an independent INESC: INESC Porto, in 1998.
“Being head of the DIL wasn’t easy, because I suddenly had to deal with many concrete areas.” And more kept appearing, like public procurement and technology transfer. The foetus was growing and becoming a child stretching the arms and legs out of the cot.
“My role was legal counsel; I did not manage other operational services. I supported everyone, but I was a little bit on my own.” She still remembers an exchange of emails between Professor Artur Pimenta Alves and the BBC, in which there was a reference to the institute’s “legal department”. “‘Our legal department’ was me; I laughed so much” – and she laughed again recalling the story. “The department was a part of me,” she mentioned, laughing.
INESC (made in) Porto
She doesn’t believe in “keeping one’s distance”, describes herself as “not very structured”, and has led dozens of people through a combination of recognition and autonomy. Experience, wisdom, patience and understanding are words that come up time and again from those who shared an office, a department and years of work with her – and there is no shortage of testimonials to prove it. “I’m what you might call a ‘boss, but not really’. I have great respect for people’s work, and I always acknowledge the work of those who collaborate with me. But I also know that I’m very lucky for the people around me.”
She may have been influenced by the approach of Mário Jorge Leitão, a former director with whom she worked for many years, and later by Pedro Guedes de Oliveira – who always inspired “a great deal of trust in the people he led”, she mentioned.
According to Graça Barbosa, this approach paved a straight path towards an independent, autonomous INESC in the North, with the creation of INESC Porto. It is something that she still takes pride in today: “I feel we did a good part of that process on our own. We sought some input on the statutes, but basically, we did everything in-house, without asking for any extra support. And we did it because we had the empowerment and the trust we needed to do so.”
A pen pal, a “mother figure”
In INESC’s early days, Graça Barbosa saw trust arrive from… Lisbon. She came across an advert for a human resources management course taking place in Lisbon, in the ads section of a newspaper. It happened shortly after she finished her degree in Coimbra – when she had returned to Vila Verde, where she was born, in search of an opportunity in the field. And it was here that her future at INESC began to take shape.
“On that course, I met several people, including one I became particularly close to and later corresponded with by letter. That was Paula Dias, who is still part of the INESC world today. I started working at another institution after that stay in Lisbon, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the job. One day, Paula asked me whether I’d be interested in working at INESC, because they were going to hire a lawyer for Porto. And all I said was: ‘Of course I am.'”
She would become her counterpart in Lisbon. In the North, she highlighted the role of Regina Freitas, the “mother figure for newcomers”, who “gave direct support to the board and knew all the rules”. INESC at Mompilher was like a “small hub”: professors, researchers and administrative staff frequented the same spaces, the same restaurants – Restaurante Ernesto, just a stone’s throw from the building, holds a great deal of history from the institute’s early years at its tables.
Always on the move
Those were the years of the “growing foetus “, of paper and restraint. Later, growth spread so far that, as Graça Barbosa wrote in 2011, the “carers” had no choice “but to change themselves too, repositioning themselves in relation to it: instilling principles, reinforcing values, establishing the basic rules and the boundaries within which the young institution should be autonomous and, hopefully, responsible”.
She has done this – and continues to do this – every day. On the Board, she holds responsibility for areas like conflict-of-interest management, legal support, diversity and inclusion, and gender equality. “Very important areas,” she acknowledged, ones she has followed more closely over the past 10 years. “I’m proud of the institution, I genuinely enjoy the work I do every day,” she added.
For the past 24 years, she has commuted from Matosinhos to Asprela – the same year INESC moved to the FEUP Campus, she moved to the coastal municipality. Alongside these commutes, there have been many other journeys: “What I really love doing is travelling, travelling to different places… I’m always travelling.” Cape Verde, Georgia, more recently the Silk Road, with Japan and New Zealand on her wishlist (perhaps drawn in by the charm of one of her favourite films – Jane Campion’s The Piano). “I’ve got quite a full and long list of places I still wish to visit.” Until the next trip comes along, she “travels” through books: “I’m always reading. And I’m always buying books too – I’ve got a waiting list. But I don’t read very fast, since I can only read at night.”
INESC TEC has filled a large part of her days for decades now, and she has no plans to know another job, another routine. “I’m happy enough to stay here,” she claimed. With little room for nostalgia, and plenty of enthusiasm for trying new things, she still takes pleasure in “seeing different things”. That has never changed where INESC TEC is concerned: “There are better days, and worse ones,” but even though it has now reached the “age of reason” – INESC TEC turns 41 – someone still needs to look after it. Graça Barbosa is one of the most dedicated “carers”: she has known it since the days of “paper, paper and more paper”.
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